If we can't afford it today, we can't afford it in the future

Sunday

Sep 11, 2011 at 12:39 AM

When life is fair, I will stop having a sinking feeling every time I hear the phrase “when the economy rebounds” uttered. I always have an urge to respond by paraphrasing Peggy Lee’s classic song, maybe this is all that there is.

Somehow local government officials seem to have an inside track that the economy is going to go back to the pre-real estate crash of the early 2000s and their yearly increase in expenditures and ability to borrow money for those things that they can’t pay for now should continue to be the norm.

Well guess what, those days of a bloated real estate market fueling yearly increases in the total property values within the County, thus allowing the mysterious value of the mill to increase, are probably gone forever and we need to develop a new dynamic that includes less operational expenses, forgoing desirable but non-essential capital improvements projects and rid ourselves of this delusion that we can borrow our way out of this situation. If we can’t afford it today, we can’t afford it in the future.

In the last year or two, I have heard a majority of local governments actually brag that they have not raised operational millage rates and while this statement on its face may be true what some have not said it that they have increased operational spending because they received additional revenues for those seemingly static rates due to the increase in the value of the mill. Now the value of the elusive mill is critically dependent on the total dollar value of property, when times are good property values tend to rise and more tax revenues are collected.

However, that is not going to happen near term or in the foreseeable future. Property values have plummeted and without a crystal ball, there is nothing on the horizon to say they will rise. The much ballyhooed millage rollup of 2013 will allow these entities to collect the same amount of money but from a radically different set of homeowners, a large portion of the tax burden will now shift away from the large previously expensive properties that will see yearly tax decreases and unto the more stable middle class of homeowners that will see their taxes increase.

Instead of basing future budgets projections on unrealistic assumptions such as increasing revenues from things such as Accommodation and Hospitality taxes, it would be prudent to begin in an orderly fashion, a return to providing only basic essential government services.

Beaufort County was able to cut its operating budget by about eight percent for this fiscal year showing that it can be done without people rioting in the streets. I suspect all other local entities have this same potential, needing only the will to do it.

Let’s make Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changing” our new theme song.

In the meantime, you can contact Joe Croley at Whenlifeisfair@gmail.com

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